How to use the text link counter‎

How to use the text link counter‎

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In the latest release of Yoast SEO, we’ve added a text link counter. It consists of two counters, the first counts the number of internal text links you’ve put in your post. And the other counter counts the number of internal links to a post. These counters can be a huge help in improving the structure of your site. I’ve already explained why you should use the text link counter. Here, I’ll show you how to use our new text link counter.

Where do I find the text link counter?

From now on, checking the number of internal links in a post and the number of links to a certain post is very easy. You can find the two counters in your post overview:
Look a bit closer:

This functionality is very actionable. If you want to improve your site structure and your SEO, the text link counter will help you do that. You can go through your post with few links and improve your site’s structure step by step. We’re already thinking of ways to make this experience even smoother.

Find and resolve: ‘Orphaned articles’

Some articles don’t get many links from other posts; we often refer to them as ‘orphaned articles.’ These pages are hard to find, both by Google as well as the user. With the help of our text link counter, these articles are easy to detect. If you want to check which articles don’t receive many links, you can sort the articles by number in the second link counter column. Articles with 0 posts linking to them, will appear on top of the list.

The next step is to open those posts or pages with few links. Is it a page you don’t find useful anymore? Just delete and redirect it to another relevant page. If you do think it’s still a valid page on your site, figure out which other posts could link to it. Our internal linking tool (only for Yoast SEO premium) could help you to figure out which posts are linking candidates. Go to those similar post and insert links from these posts to your ‘orphaned’ post. That strategy could very well result in a small boost in your rankings.

Improve site structure by adding links

The other counter – the first column – counts the number of text links to other posts and pages on your website. You’ll want your post to link to other posts and pages with similar content, as it helps your readers to figure out other posts to read. If you link to similar content, the time people spend on your website will go up.

To find blog posts with few links to other posts, order the posts by the number of links. The posts with the fewest links will appear on top of your list. Adding links is incredibly easy with our internal linking tool. In our internal linking tool, we’ll suggest which post to link to based on similar content. You can add the suggestions, and you’re ready to go to the next blog post with few links.

Improve those cornerstone articles

An excellent way to use the text link counter is to use it for the cornerstone content articles. These are your most important articles. You’ll need to have your other posts linking to these particular relevant posts. To check whether you’re linking sufficiently to these cornerstones, you should select your cornerstone articles in your post overview. You can indicate which posts are your cornerstones in the Yoast SEO meta box (just beneath the snippet preview). If one of your cornerstones has very few links, you’ll have work to do! Our internal linking tool will help you to figure out which articles to start linking to.

Conclusion on the text link counter

The new text link counter is a beneficial tool to improve your site’s structure actively. It’ll show you which posts need linking. If you combine this text link counter with our internal linking tool and the cornerstone content check, you’ll be able to bring your site’s structure to the next level. That will instantly increase the time people spend on your page and eventually will result in higher rankings in Google.

30 Responses to How to use the text link counter‎

By Ronon 17 July, 2017

How do you install or turn the link counter on? This article does not explain that. I have Premium, and went through the Dashboard and looked in posts, but I do not see anything that allows me to enable this feature.
Can someone direct me?

Thanks

By Paulon 17 July, 2017

From your Dashboard – General
Text link counter

it will count all your internal links

By Paulon 16 July, 2017

Looks interesting. But what if you have a WP blog integrated into your website. I mean, when the blog is only a part of the total project. I noted it calculates blog links only, but if you link another page of the website, I think for Googlebot it’s an internal link too.

Thanks!

By ChrisKon 13 July, 2017

Is it only for posts and not for pages?
I see the counters displayed in the Posts list but not in the Pages list.

By ChrisKon 13 July, 2017

Replying to myself. I found what it was.
I use the Admin columns Pro plugin.
I needed to add the two (In and Out number of link) columns in the definition of the Admin Column Pro view used to display the Pages list.
In Admin Column Pro, the other Yoast columns/fields are located under the “Yoast” section in the list of the fields you can select to add to the Pages view, and captioned like “SEO Score”, “Readability score” etc.”. The 2 new columns/fields are listed under the “Default” section and are captioned differently: “#link in post” and “# internal links to”.
Maybe would it be better to have them displaying all together under the “Yoast” section?
I found the “#link in post” and “# internal links to” columns in the Pages view very interesting. I can already see some correlations between pages ranking better than other and the number of “# internal links to”, significantly higher for these pages.

Please take out the function from the list view or at least give possibility to deactivate.

By Andreason 13 July, 2017

Try to use the Text Link Counter option now for days but either the counter does not start (“Text 0 of xxx processed) or its stuck at one text forever.
How long does it generally take to run the counter?

By Mockon 13 July, 2017

The new update interferes with Admin Columns Pro. I get a huge MYSQL Error on my product page in the backend. Looking the tables up in phpmyadmin it shows that they are not there or at least I don’t see them. When adding them (like you suppose) phpmyadmin says they are already there. I have no clue how to solve this problem.

I’m wondering whether some people would thing that text links are distracting for the viewer- that it makes the viewer lose focus? This is a question we get sometimes, from clients.
The answer is… text links are a positive bonus. Remember- the viewer has the choice whether to click on those links or not. If they click out from your page, and that original page was a good one- they’ll be back!
This is a great tool. It makes life much easier.
Thanks!
Cathy

By muhammeton 11 July, 2017

Yoast SEO Text Link Counter – The texts and pages on the site are not updated. So I have to cancel it. The problem is resolved when you cancel the Sithe Yoast plugin.

Hello,
I recently update my plugin. However, i do not use anchor text links in my posts. I use a plugin called: Content Views, which allows me to create links to other blogs while using an image.
I manage a service company website, Air Conditioning. In my blog posts, when i am talking about, ex: why air ducts are leaking money. Instead of linking text, i will generate a short code, using the Content Views plugin, from my “Why air ducts are leaking money” blog, and paste that link to a new blog. Now the new blog links to the air duct blog. However, your update is not counting this as a link to display under your new link count. Here is an example of a blog post without anchor text links, but it does have 3 links to 3 blogs. https://servicechampions.com/air-conditioner-repairs-increase-energy-efficiency/

Hi Camilo, Yoast SEO just counts the links in the text, as they are most valuable for SEO – and we do have some practical implementation reasons for that too :-). The links you create with Content Views are valuable for sure, but don’t forget to add text links too. They’re the best!

Hi Mitch! The first time you’ll need to run the function “Count links in your texts” under SEO > Dashboard > General so that all your links are counted. More info here: I don’t see internal link counts

Thanks for this post! I use in all my websites Yoast plugin, Genesis Framework child themes, ShortPixel (for images optimization), LiteSpeed Cache) and Accelerated mobile Pages and all my websites is very good!

Hi Michael, we do let people know: there’s a notification that says that that pops up when you update the plugin. Did you not see that notification?

By Davidon 8 July, 2017

Thanks for this wonderful feature!
I’d have 2 questions though… I have a link to my homepage in my footer (theme feature). Consequently, every page of my site links to my homepage. But the counter says only 1 internal link points to my homepage. So I was wondering…
1. Why doesn’t the Yoast counter take those links into account?
2. Does Google take those link into account?
Thank you for your answers and thanks again for the plugin!

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